page_title: Spiranthes spiralis
section_title: Ecology
hierarchical_section_title: Spiranthes spiralis / Ecology
caption_attribution_description: Spiranthes spiralis, Frankenhöhe, Germany
context_page_description: Spiranthes spiralis, commonly known as autumn lady's-tresses, is an orchid that grows in Europe and adjacent North Africa and Asia. It is a small grey-green plant. It forms a rosette of four to five pointed, sessile, ovate leaves about 3 cm in length. In late summer an unbranched stem of about 10–15 cm tall is produced with approximately four sheath-shaped leaves. The white flowers are about 5 mm long and have a green spot on the lower lip. They are arranged in a helix around the upper half of the stalk. The species is listed in Appendix II of CITES as a species that is not currently threatened with extinction but that may become so. Autumn lady's-tresses are legally protected in Belgium and the Netherlands.
context_section_description: Autumn lady's tresses may be found on quite different substrates, from weathered chalk and limestone to sand and gravel in dunes and slightly acidic heathlands. Occasionally, it has also been found on clay on sloping sites. It sometimes occurs in lawns, and was reported from the top of a wall in Sicily. Soils need to be low in nitrogen and phosphorus and neither dry nor wet.
  The species occurs in different plant communities, most commonly in highly diverse Festuca ovina–Avenula pratensis grasslands that exist because of intense grazing by sheep or rabbits. These grasslands contain grasses, dicots, and mosses in different mixtures. The turf is short, continuous and consist of very small individual plants. Characteristic species that may be abundant in these grasslands in the UK include the grasses Sheep's fescue Festuca ovina, red fescue F. rubra, Quaking-grass Briza media, crested hair-grass Koeleria macrantha and Crested dog's-tail Cynosurus cristatus, the dicots ribwort plantain Plantago lanceolata, Small burnet Poterium sanguisorba ssp. sanguisorba, Common Bird's-foot Trefoil Lotus corniculatus, Common Cat's-ear Hypochaeris radicata, Mouse-ear hawkweed Pilosella officinarum, Rough hawkbit Leontodon hispidus and Dwarf thistle Cirsium acaule, and the moss Pseudoscleropodium purum.
  In the Netherlands, the remaining population in an old dune grassland occurs in a community akin to the Botrychio-Polygaletum, where it occurs with Briza media, Glaucous sedge Carex flacca, Broad-leaved thyme Thymus pulegioides, Common milkwort Polygala vulgaris and Fairy flax Linum catharticum.
caption: Plant community on the Frankenhöhe, Bavaria
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